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DNS issue?

Hey all,

I've been having a spot of trouble accessing this site for about the last week. My DNS keeps resolving to 108.162.195.182, which is apparently some cloudflare site that boasts some "always online" tech or other, and either said "no cached page is available" or fed me a cached page. I had to manually edit my hosts file to get an IP that actually worked - 174.132.204.34 (gotten off of a remote whois service on the web).

Any idea why your DNS doesn't point to your servers from all locations?

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

Re: DNS issue?

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth

Hey all,

I've been having a spot of trouble accessing this site for about the last week. My DNS keeps resolving to 108.162.195.182, which is apparently some cloudflare site that boasts some "always online" tech or other, and either said "no cached page is available" or fed me a cached page. I had to manually edit my hosts file to get an IP that actually worked - 174.132.204.34 (gotten off of a remote whois service on the web).

Any idea why your DNS doesn't point to your servers from all locations?

Sending you to one of those many IPs, dependent on your location in the world, is the correct behaviour. You can see the announcement here (under the section titled "Improving Website Speed"). Please change your hosts file back immediately.

If the Content Delivery Network (CDN) is unable to contact the site, it will attempt to deliver a cached version of the pages if one is available.

If the site is inaccessable for more than a short blip, then we want to know details about it so that we can report it. Instructions for what we would like to know are below:

Originally Posted by Rawhide

If you're receiving these messages, I want to know about it. Please include the following information:

The exact error message

When it happened and how long it lasted.

If the alt site worked

The results from pinging www.giantitp.com and alt.giantitp.com
In Windows, you can get this by opening a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd, then press Enter), then typing "ping www.giantitp.com", press Enter, type "ping alt.giantitp.com", press Enter (both sans quotes)

The results of a traceroute (aka tracert) to www.giantitp.com and alt.giantitp.com
In Windows, you can get this by opening a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd, then press Enter), then typing "tracert www.giantitp.com", press Enter, type "tracert alt.giantitp.com", press Enter (both sans quotes)

For full troubleshooting purposes, it would also be really good if you could include your public IP address at the time, you can send this to me in a PM. You can get this by going to Google and typing in "my ip" (sans quotes).

Re: DNS issue?

The server is down for maintenance
There may be a network problem
The site may be experiencing excessive load

Retry for a live version of the site
What's CloudFlare?

This website uses CloudFlare in order to help keep it online when the server is down by serving cached copies of pages when they are unavailable. Unfortunately, a cached copy of the page you requested is not available, but you may be able to reach other cached pages on the site.

The recruiting are gives:
Database backup in progress, please try again in 30 minutes.

D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 gives:
This page (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59) is currently offline. However, because the site uses CloudFlare's Always Online™ technology you can continue to surf a snapshot of the site. We will keep checking in the background and, as soon as the site comes back, you will automatically be served the live version. Always Online™ is powered by CloudFlare | Hide this Alert

I'm at: 67.168.187.103 (not that you can't just read it off the site logs).

The issue started up... Monday or Tuesday, I think? ... and is still ongoing.

The alt page... works, but apparently I don't remember my password, and the forgot password link on the alt site leads back to the main site... which means I can't give you your answers without keeping my hosts file edited. Ah well. Getting rid of the edit after this post per your request (which means unless you dig up my e-mail and actually e-mail me, I won't be able to give you any further answers until after it's resolved). If it's relevant, my router says my DNS entries are 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.76.76.

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

Re: DNS issue?

The URL to request a password reset is:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/admincp/user.php?do=emailpassword
or
http://alt.giantitp.com/forums/admincp/user.php?do=emailpassword

You should be able to use the latter if the first one (www) doesn't work. I have already asked it to send you an email with your password reset code. Note that the link in the email will be to the www page and if the problem is persisting, you may need to change the url in the email from www to alt.

The URL to request a password reset is:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/admincp/user.php?do=emailpassword
or
http://alt.giantitp.com/forums/admincp/user.php?do=emailpassword

You should be able to use the latter if the first one (www) doesn't work. I have already asked it to send you an email with your password reset code. Note that the link in the email will be to the www page and if the problem is persisting, you may need to change the url in the email from www to alt.

Thanks - I'm still on the alt site (main still doesn't work), but at least I'm in, now.

Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2012-09-16 at 12:42 PM.

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

Re: DNS issue?

I've got it set to auto-clear every time I close my browser, which I've done several times since it started. I just used the actual button for clearing it now - no apparent effect. And what shows up on the site changes periodically - earlier, the recruiting forum was showing me a cached page of the database backup notice; now it's saying no cached version available.

Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2012-09-16 at 07:54 PM.

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.

Re: DNS issue?

Originally Posted by Jack_Simth

I've got it set to auto-clear every time I close my browser, which I've done several times since it started. I just used the actual button for clearing it now - no apparent effect. And what shows up on the site changes periodically - earlier, the recruiting forum was showing me a cached page of the database backup notice; now it's saying no cached version available.

Re: DNS issue?

Also, are there any proxies along the way? Technical support is very helpful, but reporting that they can't replicate the issue even when connecting to the same CDN server IP. An outage should not last this long and should affect everyone being sent to that particular IP - when it happens, they then reroute everyone that would normally get that server and get to work on fixing it.

Re: DNS issue?

OK: Why would a bad cookie cause the system to repeatedly tell me the site was down?

Originally Posted by Rawhide

Also, are there any proxies along the way? Technical support is very helpful, but reporting that they can't replicate the issue even when connecting to the same CDN server IP. An outage should not last this long and should affect everyone being sent to that particular IP - when it happens, they then reroute everyone that would normally get that server and get to work on fixing it.

Re: DNS issue?

Hey all,

OK, this keeps happening, to the tune of about 1/week. The cookie to delete is "cf_use_ob" (yes, it's happening often enough that I took the time to figure out exactly which cookie contains the issue).

Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.